Two storey pagoda topped shopfronts line Wentworth Avenue under a painted gate, and Backdraft used a firehouse on Cermak Road.
What Chinatown looks like
Wentworth Avenue crosses Cermak Road under a painted gate spanning the street, an elevated Red Line platform crossing overhead just behind it. A tiled pavilion and a glazed Nine Dragon Wall sit in the plaza beside the tracks, red columns and green tile roofs against the steel structure above.
South of the gate, two storey brick shopfronts carry ceramic tile parapets shaped like pagoda roofs, Chinese and English signs stacked above the doors. The rises three storeys over the avenue near the gate, its tan brick tower framed by twin green tile pagoda roofs and red wooden brackets dating from 1928.
A block north across Cermak Road, opens off Wentworth Avenue, a two storey outdoor mall built on former rail land in 1993 and decorated with sculptures of the Chinese zodiac animals. The Chinatown branch library faces the same stretch in curved glass and vertical steel fins, low enough that the Loop's towers show over its roofline.
West of Wentworth, the blocks turn residential. Some of the two and three flat buildings on the side streets predate the neighborhood itself, red brick and sandstone fronts from the 1880s standing near newer courtyard housing, its entrances marked with red steel gates lettered in Chinese characters.
Shot in Chinatown
Backdraft used a firehouse on West Cermak Road as the exterior for its Chinatown engine company scenes. The building sits a short walk west of the Cermak-Chinatown Red Line stop, on the same stretch the gate spans.
Backdraft, 1991
Played a Chicago firehouse, Chicago, 1990s
The firehouse Backdraft used stood a few yards west of the Cermak-Chinatown el station on West Cermak Road, the only stretch its own source names. Engine Company 8, at 212 West Cermak Road, is the sole firehouse on that block and is still an active Chicago Fire Department house today. Street View
What Chinatown can double for
Arch Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia's own Chinatown crosses under a painted ceremonial gate at 10th and Arch Street, the Friendship Gate, forty feet high and dedicated in 1984. Restaurants and shops sit under apartment floors south of Vine Street, the same shopfronts under flats arrangement that runs down Wentworth Avenue. Philadelphia's gate spans a wider street and stands apart from the block behind it, so a frame holding both the gate and the shopfronts needs to crop tighter than Wentworth Avenue's own corner shots. Try searching shopfronts under a painted gate now.
Spadina Avenue in Toronto, Ontario
Toronto's own Chinatown runs along Spadina Avenue at Dundas Street West, a dense strip of two and three storey shops fronted with stacked bilingual Chinese and English signage from the 1970s, the same kind of shopfront lettering that fills Wentworth Avenue. Neither street uses a gate, so the match rests on the signage and the shopfront scale rather than an entry structure. Toronto's own streetcars run down the middle of Spadina Avenue, so a frame matching Wentworth Avenue needs to keep any passing streetcar or bus out of the lower half of the shot. Try searching stacked bilingual shopfront signage now.
Beach Street in Boston, Massachusetts
Boston's own Chinatown crosses under a stone paifang gate at Beach Street and Surface Road, given by Taiwan in 1982 and set with a pair of carved stone lions. Its own storefronts run three to five storeys, taller than the two storey shopfronts along most of Wentworth Avenue. A Wentworth Avenue frame needs to stay low and close to the storefronts, since anything above the second floor shows Chicago's own scale rather than Boston's taller blocks. Try searching storefronts under a stone gate now.
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